There are times when I wonder why I’m going to school to be a teacher. It’s a job where I won’t ever get paid much. I’ll be working with kids who are only at school because they are forced to go. Their parents don’t care if they do good in school or if they flunk out. They might be rude, talk back, sarcastic, and snotty nosed. I’ll have to follow the curriculum with very little deviation. I’ll be forced to “teach the test.” I’ll be grading papers and making lesson plans till wee hours of the night. The list goes on and on…
This all seems like teaching is just so horrible…but there are so many benefits that out weight any negatives.
A couple of weeks ago, when I was in NLR doing my field, I went with my mentor teacher to give a student some work to do. He was in “detention” which meant he had to sit in a desk right outside of the principal’s office. To me this was not a good idea because everyone coming or going through the office knew he was in trouble. He was humiliated to be sitting there. My mentor teacher tried to explain to him the assignments but he refused to pay attention. She looked up at me and motioned that “its like pulling teeth” to get him to respond. I thought I might give it a try. When my mentor teacher went about doing other stuff in the office, I stayed behind with the boy and talked to him about the book he was reading. I asked him what it was about and if he liked it. He told me all about it and that he did like it. He seemed to be responding a little more. We had to go back to the classroom with the other students…
Fast forward 2 weeks. I came in this morning to the school and received a hug first thing from him. Now receiving hugs from the students isn’t a new thing…but hugs from him have never happened yet. So, first thing in the morning I was taken by surprise. While I was observing my mentor teacher and helping students, he kept coming to me for help. He seemed to be very motivated to do the assignments….then it was my turn to teach. It was my last time to teach this semester. I was extremely nervous. Not getting up to teach…I’m not public speaking/stage shy at all…but my mentor teacher had to grade me and I had to record myself for an assignment to be graded. This was a big deal for me. My other lessons had super fun activities including molding play dough. The kids LOVED it!!! But this lesson just didn’t seem very fun for me so I wasn’t super excited. I was afraid my students would react badly when they realized I wasn’t going to have a fun activity for them. I did have a file folder game to sort problems and solutions, but to me that just didn’t seem very fun. Boy was I WRONG!! They went crazy over wanting to play the file folder game. I had to leave it there because everyone wanted to continue playing the game.
…but back to the boy. After my lesson, before he switched class back to his homeroom classroom, he came up and gave me a big, huge again. Then he told me “thank you so much for this fun lesson!” My heart just melted. After all my worrying and trying to keep the class in order I felt totally blessed by this one little boy. He wasn’t the only one to come up and thank me for the lesson and give me hugs but he defiantly had the biggest impact on me today!
I know being a teacher will be difficult. There will be days that I want to give up and be a stay at home mom for Brooklyn and any other kids Luke and I have. But I will never forget the impact a little lesson with a simple activity..a little attention…a BIG hug can make in a child’s life. No matter what those kids have to deal with at home, they can always come to school knowing I LOVE them! I love those kids already and I only see them once a week. I can’t wait to love the kids I get to see everyday.
